


ask it to fall or tell you why

by OAbsalom



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Basically What You'd Expect From the Crucifixion Scene, Blood, Crowley Isn't Regretful Or Bitter, Crowley Questions (Good Omens), Death, Episode: s01e03 Hard Times, Golgotha, Ineffability, Religion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Scene: Crucifixion of Jesus 33 AD (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:02:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23562760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OAbsalom/pseuds/OAbsalom
Summary: He stayed a long time. Long enough that the angel, incurious and inculpable, left him - like all the others - to his questions. Crowley was a part of this; it had been his job. In some ways, he’d failed; in others, he’d succeeded. Which was worse?(Crowley reflects on the crucifixion of Jesus and the ineffability that brought them all into the same nonsensical plan.)Edit: Now with fanart companion piece
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	ask it to fall or tell you why

**Author's Note:**

> The Golgotha scene in the show has been reverberating in my bones for almost a year now. Raised hyperreligious, I've been unable to separate Crowley's role in the crucifixion with the Biblical history in which it seems inherently embroiled.
> 
> An image of a feeling has been carving its name inside my chest for these many months. I wanted to draw it, I _tried_ to draw it, but I'm no artist. So I've finally given up and drawn it the way I know best.
> 
> Edit: I ended up drawing it anyway. The words do the feeling more justice, but I think it complements it well. See the art below the fic.

Typically days, instead it took three hours for him to die. There had been a decent amount of blood loss from the wounds in his wrists, but the dehydration from that and the hot Israelite sun wasn't enough to take him in such a short time. It was the laceration to the liver that did it, their cruelty unable to be sated quickly enough, bleeding into his abdomen more than out of the hole under his ribs. 

A hymn rang from his throat right before. Crowley recognized it, had heard it for hundreds of years. You know how it's impossible to know what thing about a line of poetry resonates with the person sharing it with you? What they hope you see. What _about them_ they hope you see - the hope of a little shred of shared perspective. Everyone is always disappointed when they share those meaningful things with another person; every time, disappointed to find their comrade's experience just different enough that the significance falls on deaf ears. The demon wondered what those lines meant to the dying man. Recalling a prophecy he falsely believed he was fulfilling. Telling the other humans of their own folly. Perhaps truly calling out to God for the reason he'd been abandoned. 

God didn’t answer, and the people didn’t learn their lesson. (They didn’t learn _any_ of his lessons, Crowley would find over and over in the coming centuries.) The earthquake did put a momentary Fear of the Lord into a good lot of them, but when the eclipse passed and the man didn’t pull the nails from his wrists to crawl down off the cross himself, they were left with the anticlimax. A few lingered for a while. Crowley overheard one of them asking for the corpse. Which - well, wasn’t that morbid? He wasn’t even cold yet. On a hill nearby, weeping and watching sat some of the women that had been following him the last three years.

He stayed a long time. Long enough that the angel, incurious and inculpable, left him - like all the others - to his questions. Crowley was a part of this; it had been his job. In some ways, he’d failed; in others, he’d succeeded. Which was worse? Temptations had dropped from him like rain or the words of someone without enough time left. The better ones hadn’t worked, the holy man wandering away from his enticements, directly into the life that would lead him to this piece of cypress upon which scores of men had breathed their last. The worse ones had, though - the ones he’d accomplished, what, less than 24 hours ago? 

Crowley did his job. Guilt wasn’t the emotion, exactly. Worse things had come into play from his messing folks around. Even worse still were things pinned on him by his superiors. Few of them held the weight he knew this had - and had _any_ of them, really? It sent scores of thoughts seeping like groundwater through the limestone that filled his mind and heart. Notes of Questions. Stanzas of Knowledge. 

The few remaining stragglers - perhaps curious as to whether the olive plaque above his head was accurate; rubbernecking to see the victory or carnage of the King of the Jews - didn’t stop the demon as he approached; sat leaned on the post below the suspended body. The deep red of the blood wouldn’t show on Crowley - it never did - whether from the blackness of his robes or how profoundly it had soaked into the thirsty, weathered wood. 

And so, for the first time in a long time, he allowed himself to contemplate the colossal catechism in which he was an unwilling but compulsory component. As always had been, no regret could be found, nor outright animosity. Perhaps a feeble tinge of the sour taste ineffability inevitably leaves on the tongue of one who longs to Know Why.

**Author's Note:**

> Walk outside, look at the sky  
> Ask it to fall or tell you Why.  
>  _\- 99% of Us Is Failure, Matthew Good_


End file.
